Modern English Teacher June 1993 [antikvár]

EDITORIAL In this issue of MET we bring you the results of our competition 'How do you learn a language?'. We are delighted to award the prize to Li Ming, from the People's Republic of China, whose entry you can read on page 54. One of the competition entrants wrote about language learning from the perspective of a language teacher. There is another reference to the teacher as learner in this issue of MET, in It Made Me Think {Diary of a language learner I teacher). There are also plenty of suggestions for practising different items of language in Classroom Ideas; Lend me your words is another article on word origins, as so many of you said you enjoyed the last one; and David Maule, in Soundword, has devised his most fiendish word puzzle so far. One way and another, this issue of MET seems to have rather a lot to do with Scotland. A number of contributions come from Scotland and one of the two Kaleidoscope articles is all about Scotland. And I have been in correspondence with the Church of Scotland. In the Kaleidoscope Factfile in Vol 1 No 3 we published some statistics for 'other Christian denominations in Britain'. I have received a letter from the Rev. John Stevenson, General Secretary of the Department of Education of the Church of Scotland, pointing out the omission of the Church of Scotland from these statistics: T would remind you that there are 1330 parishes ministered to by the Church of Scotland, with a total membership of some 770,217. There are even 7 Church of Scotland parishes in England, with a membership of over 3000.' I can only apologise to the Church of Scotland for this oversight. Incidentally, I learnt that the Queen, who is the head of the Church of England, becomes an ordinary member of the Church of Scotland when she crosses the border. The Royal Family's membership of the Church of Scotland when they are in Scotland allowed Princess Anne to choose a Scottish church for her second marriage, as the Church of Scotland considers divorce and remarriage possible. I also recently received a letter from another EFL magazine pointing out that they and we had both published the same article in a recent issue. Neither of us knew about it until both magazines were published, and it is equally embarrassing for both of us. It made me realise that, in the Guidelines for Contributors I wrote in Vol 2 No 1,1 did not mention sending articles to one magazine at a time - so let me mention it now. There's really no need to send an article to more than one magazine at a time: it is not good for anyone if the same article is published twice, and there may be problems of copyright. In the Editorial of Vol 2 No 11 mentioned the complimentary comments people have made about MET, and I said we wouldn't let it make us complacent. Well, complacent is the last thing I have been feeling lately, as I have had some mistakes in that issue pointed out to me. A gremlin seems to have got into the Contents page, and I apologise to Mary Warnock and George Carcasson for the errors in their names. Apologies are also due to Paul Biro, whom we wrongly described as the 'founder and director of Living Languages Seminar.' I also have to apologise to Mark Fletcher because some of the phonetic transcription in his 'Lighthouse keeper's daughter' is wrong (that gremlin again?): keepers should be /ki:p3Z/, rolls should be /rsulz/ and treasure on is usually pronounced with a linking Irl between the two words. I hope those are all the apologies that are due. I take some comfort from the Art Nouveau architect and designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Scottish, of course) who, when it was pointed out to him that his chairs were beautiful but collapsed when sat upon, said: 'There is hope in honest error; none in the cold perfection of the mere stylist.' I hope you enjoy this issue of MET - and that the gremlins have stayed away Thérese Tobin Please send letters and articles to: Modern English Teacher, Macmillan ELT, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hants RG21 2XS